LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Rachel Cargle!

Let it warm you

Hi Lovelets!

Here’s one of my dad’s favorite jokes:

A man is hiking in a canyon, when the ground beneath him falls away and suddenly he falls down a ravine. Fortunately there is a tree branch sticking out about halfway down, and he manages to grab it — but now he is hanging over the abyss, with no way to save himself.

He cries out, “Is there anybody up there who can help me?”

A booming voice comes from above. “It is me, your Lord. I will help you, but you must do exactly as as I say.”

The man is overcome with a wave of relief. “Of course! Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it!”

The voice says, “Just let go of the branch, my child, and trust.”

There’s a long pause.

Then the man shouts, “Is there anybody ELSE up there?”

My dad is not a religious or spiritual man, which makes the joke even funnier to me when he tells it. I was raised in a family that valued self-reliance above all other virtues, and who didn’t really believe in anything they could not see, touch, feel, or manage. So to be told by a disembodied voice, “Let go, and trust,” would be very, very hard for them.

Surely there must be another way!

And yet what I experience whenever I write a letter to myself from Unconditional Love is exactly that — a voice that says, “Let go and trust.” And that’s what I hear in your letters, too, week after week. I hear Love saying: let go of your control mechanisms and trust that you are loved. Let go of your fear and trust that you are loved. Let go of your shame and trust that you are loved.

This week, our special guest is my beloved friend and teacher Rachel Cargle. When Rachel speaks, I lean in. And when Unconditional Love tells someone as brilliant, sensitive, and powerful as Rachel that she can let go and trust that it is absolutely okay — even after all these years of growth and evolution — that she still has her demons, I am inclined to listen and believe.

Let us let go and trust together this week, my friends, as we see what Unconditional Love has to tell us about our OWN demons. Let us be brave. Let us not cling to the branch of control. Let us see what happens when we listen.

I love you all.

Love,

Your Lizzy

Dear Love, what would you have me know today about my demons?

Oh sweetheart, did you see how immediately you tried to wiggle out of this one? Do you see how you read your friend Rachel’s brave letter a few times, looking to see if there was something else — anything else — you might use as a topic for your letter this week besides this? Do you see how your belly filled with snakes of fear at the very thought of your demons, and how your mind started to duck and dodge, to figure out how to talk about this without talking about it?

Brave seeker, settle.

Do you remember what I’ve been telling you for the last few months, several times a day, and which you are starting to stretch into, to imagine really believing? THERE IS NOTHING AND NOBODY IN THE WORLD THAT YOU NEED TO FEAR.

And that includes your demons, who spent so many years trampling and rampaging through your interior world, flipping over the furniture and ransacking the silver.

My love, you know them each by their name.

The demon of you are fundamentally a bad person.

The demon of you should have known better.

The demon of you are such a fraud.

The demon of look how cruel and greedy you can be.

The demon of see how much you have hurt others.

The demon of why don’t you do more to help others?

The demon of why can’t you be normal?

Even the demon of why do I still have demons?

My love, why WOULDN’T you still have demons? Why do you think you should be exempt from demonic possession? Whom have you ever met who did not have demons? No, really — be honest about this, for you have traveled the world and met every kind of person, and you have spent a lot of time at the feet of the great masters, and you have been fortunate enough to get to know some of the most admired spiritual leaders on the planet, and have you not seen even the most good and great of them troubled and bothered by their own unsettled inner business?

Do you think you are supposed to have a mind like the surface of a calm lake, my darling? What honorable meditation teacher ever taught such impossible nonsense? Do you think you are supposed to move through your Earth School curriculum without ever experiencing regret, doubt, shame, resentment, and fear?

What you call a demon we just call another normal moment in the endless thought-storm that is a human mind. Do you want the thought storm to end? Oh, it will, sweetie, at the conclusion of your life. But until then, your mind will do what minds do — it will chew at itself, it will tumult about, it will feel joy and pride and awe, but also terror and distress and discomfort. Your mind will continue to project movies onto the walls of your consciousness — and some of those movies will be love stories; and some will be travel adventures; and some will be documentaries about how great dogs are; and some of those movies will be horror flicks, crawling with undead demons who are constantly attacking you and tearing off your flesh.

But it’s all just a movie, honey.

It’s not real.

Watch it with curiosity, but don’t scare yourself half to death believing everything your brain tells you.

What is real, my angel, is this: Whatever you are — and whatever your mind is telling you — you are loved and wanted. Your presence in this ever-changing world, in this ever-changing body, in your ever-changing human mind, is no accident. You are meant to be here. Something loved you enough to dream you into being. There is no demon — human or otherwise — that can withstand the simplicity of a being who says, and who knows: “I am loved and wanted.”

Allow the demons to stay, my love — for they will stay. They are part of the greater story. When they arise, just tell them, “You are allowed to be here.”

But tell them this, too. Say “I am allowed to be here as well. For I am loved and wanted.”

Then go make yourself a sandwich and carry on.

We love you. We want you here. You are loved and wanted. That is all.

Prompt

Well, this wasn’t intentional but just in time for Halloween, let’s talk about our demons! And I get it. If you watched my video, you know I super did not want to do this. But as I always tell you, I will never ask you to do anything I don’t do.

I am here to tell you that I not only survived this exercise but I received reassuring and comforting reminders of what I needed most to hear. SO! This week, let’s ask: Dear Love, what would you have me know about my demons?